[Albion] Women’s Football

hart's shirt said:

If it was a PR stunt, the angle presented that it was equal pay for men and women has probably contributed in some way, albeit small, to what's being discussed in the article. And I'm sure we'd both agree the women's game deserves better than PR stunts.

Regardless of this and the nuance, the big picture remains. Let's hope the message doesn't fall on deaf ears.

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BevBHA said:

I’d challenge that they ‘sell out Wembley’. Lots of hand outs, free school tickets, deals and very cheap tickets… the term ‘sell out implies people buying them at full price until they are gone. Certainly not even close to the case. They’d probably got 10k fans if priced the same as the men’s, if they were lucky.

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hart's shirt said:

There's a lot to be said for cheap tickets and affordable deals for families at Wembley. It's growing the fans of the future. I'm for it.

That said, your point still stands. It's another reason why the article talks about the women's game needing to move at its own pace, ideally away from the men's game to avoid unnecessary external pressures. Comparisons with the men's game aren't helpful or even useful - we saw this with the Ellen White English record goalscorer chat a few years ago. The finances aren't even remotely comparable, be it gate receipts, sponsorship, TV money or transfer fees.

How can WSL teams who generally play in front of a few thousand demand the likes of undersoil heating and VAR when Men's Championship teams playing in front of tens of thousands don't have it? If the games are equal, should the top tier of the women's game automatically beat the second tier of the men's when it comes to facilities, etc.? We all know that it's not that simple.

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hart's shirt said:

There's a lot to be said for cheap tickets and affordable deals for families at Wembley. It's growing the fans of the future. I'm for it.

That said, your point still stands. It's another reason why the article talks about the women's game needing to move at its own pace, ideally away from the men's game to avoid unnecessary external pressures. Comparisons with the men's game aren't helpful or even useful - we saw this with the Ellen White English record goalscorer chat a few years ago. The finances aren't even remotely comparable, be it gate receipts, sponsorship, TV money or transfer fees.

How can WSL teams who generally play in front of a few thousand demand the likes of undersoil heating and VAR when Men's Championship teams playing in front of tens of thousands don't have it? If the games are equal, should the top tier of the women's game automatically beat the second tier of the men's when it comes to facilities, etc.? We all know that it's not that simple.

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

100 years ago average male height in the UK was 5 foot 7.
Today it is still only 5 foot 10!

Men's average height 'up 11cm since 1870s'

The average height of European men has risen by almost 11cm since the mid-19th century, experts have found.

www.bbc.co.uk

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hart's shirt said:

"Many will misidentify the news as an unintended and unfortunate consequence of Reading’s ownership crisis and it’s true that the current ownership and their poor communication and consideration shown to the women’s team have over-complicated, delayed and potentially scuppered a survival plan for Reading to continue in Tier 2.

But the challenges Reading are facing are not unique to them. This news should be a wake-up call to an industry that will likely underestimate its significance for the women’s game as a whole – or simply not even register it.

And I’m sorry, but we all hold responsibility.

Whether we are journalists, fans, sponsors, players, club owners, coaches, staff, the FA, broadcasters, NewCo officials, we have, in our collective haste, made demands for progress and implemented decisions that have made it close to impossible for women’s teams to survive and thrive without a men’s club stumping up significant cash - whether they want to or not. That dependency creates huge fragilities that may not come to bear now but could have devastating consequences later.

The clubs that have chosen or been required to take the path of sustained and continued revenue growth, cannot keep up with our collective demands – whether for undersoil heating or new salary or transfer records - because revenue growth is intentional, data-based, iterative and needs time.

The Karen Carney review called for “the game… to grow in its own right to reach its true potential and stand on its own two feet”.
But we are too impatient for that.

We seemingly would like that to happen – at some point – but only once we have become entirely dependent on men’s football for this next phase of “growth”.

The consequences of a strategy that forces the hand of men’s clubs, is that we are creating an entire women’s football ecosystem that is more dependent than ever on men’s football. And when a crisis in ownership happens, such as is the case at Reading, the women’s team will always be collateral damage.

But this is not just the responsibility of Reading’s ownership. This is the collective responsibility of all of us who demand women’s football to run before we can buy our own shoes."

.............................

Disappointing, but hardly surprising. Some of us have been talking about this particular elephant in the room for years on here.

2 things have been needed from the start:
1. Financial sustainability away from "a men's club stumping up significant cash - whether they want to or not".
2. The ability to shut one's ears to the media narrative of stratospheric growth achieved regardless of general week-in, week-out domestic turnstile attendances. One-off outlier games would dramatically increase average attendances giving a false picture picked up by acolyte writers on the likes of BBC Sport to reinforce a clickbait half-truth headline.

Alex Scott's The Future of Women's Football documentary failed to address it in any detail despite being an hour long. And anything remotely contentious or that might go against the narrative could be simply ascribed to a desire to maintain the status quo or just latent misogyny. Not quite a conspiracy of silence, but perhaps an inconvenient nettle that no-one was prepared to grasp because of how it might look.

So the decision by Reading to opt out of the 2nd tier of women's football (for which there is external financial sponsorship) at least shows a truer picture of the state of play. It should be "a wake up call" even if those sleeping don't want to listen. As Murphy says, the big issue isn't about Reading's particular owner here.

Of course, the irony is that it could be argued that Maggie Murphy herself, as former CEO of Lewes that promoted equal pay across the men's and women's teams, has directly contributed to the "demand women’s football to run before we can buy our own shoes." Equality yes, but at what cost?

The truth of where the women's game actually is has always been more important than what some might want it to eventually be.

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Hamilton said:

Just to point out that Maggie herself promoted a policy agreed by all directors, and that policy was never equal pay.

The equality Lewes seeks is in access to resources, facilities, and funding. As such the club agreed to equal playing budgets for the men’s and women’s teams which is slightly different to equal pay.

It can be argued that this was actually unequal as the revenues bought into Lewes by the women’s team through funding received through the FA and central sponsorship partners was higher than that bought in by the men’s team. That changes as the teams are relegated through the structure. Financially, and from a security perspective, it may have made more sense to give the women a larger budget last year to guarantee survival and funding, but that is not part of the ethos of the club.

The reason the Mercury 13 deal for the women’s team collapsed is because of these very points. Mercury weren’t prepared to see their investment spent equally within the structure. Understandably, they wanted it all spent on the women’s first team.

In the article, Maggie is right. Women’s football is now a hostage to fortune. How can a women’s team like Durham, Clapham or the Bees ever hope to achieve success when the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Man United have hyjacked the game to siphon off what success it brings in the interests of their own brands.

Football is money, and sadly what is happening to Reading is an example of how unsustainable football is.

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highflyer said:

There's a lot of truth in that article I think. I am not well informed, and am not a close follower of ANY football beyond Brightons men's team, so am speaking only from instinct and a desire to see the woman's game do well and not just become a clone of the frankly toxic, greed driven, monster that the mens game has become. Surely the point about Lewes is not whether the 'equal pay' approach was a stunt not (i suspect it sort of was, but that doesn't make it a bad thing). But that Lewes tried to set themselves on a path to be a a club which was as much, if not more, about growing and succeeding in the woman's game, where the path seemed more open, than the men's game, where there is no hope for smaller clubs without the intervention of Hollywood millionaires. I liked that idea, it made sense. But, as the article lays out, that dream was killed by the decision of the 'big' clubs to use some of their riches to fast track success in a part of the game they had previously ignored and had no part in developing. And that was enabled by the wider assumption, in the media, amongst players and pundits, and no doubt in boardrooms, that the definition of 'success' is to mirror the bloated, corrupt, soulless model of the premier league as closely as possible. That is still very much the sense I get - 'look how well the game is doing because it is growing so fast and we can recognise the names of the teams that keep.winning'. Yay, a fascist, misogynistic oil-state owned team can throw money around and win everything! This is what we all want right? Shame.

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dazzer6666 said:

Spot on. Always thought the ‘equal budgets’ (not ‘pay‘ - often misunderstood by people including the media) thing was frankly nonsense given the disparity in relative levels the teams were playing at and, as you say, the funding coming into the club because of the women’s team. Scott didn’t appear to have the funding to compete last season so relegation wasn’t a surprise at all.

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Silverhatch said:

There is merit to your viewpoint - see the brilliant game/sport of women’s golf. Unfortunately, given that blazer-wearing-misogynists banned women from playing football for 50-years in this country, any male voice in this discussion should just shut the f*** up. If you don’t like the sport - just don’t f***ing watch it. Let women decide how they want to develop their sport.

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highflyer said:

There's a lot of truth in that article I think. I am not well informed, and am not a close follower of ANY football beyond Brightons men's team, so am speaking only from instinct and a desire to see the woman's game do well and not just become a clone of the frankly toxic, greed driven, monster that the mens game has become. Surely the point about Lewes is not whether the 'equal pay' approach was a stunt not (i suspect it sort of was, but that doesn't make it a bad thing). But that Lewes tried to set themselves on a path to be a a club which was as much, if not more, about growing and succeeding in the woman's game, where the path seemed more open, than the men's game, where there is no hope for smaller clubs without the intervention of Hollywood millionaires. I liked that idea, it made sense. But, as the article lays out, that dream was killed by the decision of the 'big' clubs to use some of their riches to fast track success in a part of the game they had previously ignored and had no part in developing. And that was enabled by the wider assumption, in the media, amongst players and pundits, and no doubt in boardrooms, that the definition of 'success' is to mirror the bloated, corrupt, soulless model of the premier league as closely as possible. That is still very much the sense I get - 'look how well the game is doing because it is growing so fast and we can recognise the names of the teams that keep.winning'. Yay, a fascist, misogynistic oil-state owned team can throw money around and win everything! This is what we all want right? Shame.

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